Red Cross Training (Page 17)

There are various ways to celebrate the holiday season and many use decorations such as trees, lights and candles to show a festive spirit. Lighting candles, stringing ornaments, decking trees all make for merry holidays with friends and family, but it’s important to be aware of accidents at this time of year. Every year, common incidents include falling off ladders while hanging lights or decorations, cutting hands or fingers with scissors while wrapping or assembling toys, as well as electrical shocks.

A pilot project that would see the installation of underwater cameras in three Edmonton pools is expected to get underway by 2017. Participants at the 7^th annual Alberta Red Cross Water Safety Conference in Edmonton in October learned about the initiative. “We are always striving to improve water safety in Canada,” says Sarah Jackson, Red Cross Water Safety Representative for northern Alberta and NWT. “Conferences like this are a great opportunity to learn from each other.”

Brenna Brown is a Disaster Management volunteer with the Canadian Red Cross. She was most recently involved in the Alberta Fires response, setting up emergency reception centres and shelters in Calgary and Edmonton to provide services for the thousands of evacuees from Fort McMurray and the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo.

Knowing basic first aid can help save lives. But if you’re more comfortable learning in a language other than English, it may be more challenging to find a first aid course. More than 50 per cent of the population in B.C.’s Lower Mainland speaks a language other than English at home. Luckily, Choi, who had to administer first aid on her infant daughter, was able to take first aid and disaster preparedness lessons in Chinese last year. 

This year’s World Disasters Report, released by the International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC) examines the importance of building resilience in order to meet the growing needs for humanitarian action around the world.  

Glass and debris flew through the air as a tornado tore the roof from a section of the home that Arnold Brown rented with a friend in LaSalle, Ontario. Now, more than a month later, the 60-year-old is still trying to put the pieces of his life back together after it was quite literally torn apart.

Students today are bombarded with images and headlines of humanitarian crises. The Syrian refugee crisis and violations of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) around the world have made humanitarian education in the classroom more relevant than ever. The Canadian Red Cross offers Exploring Humanitarian Law Educator Trainings to teachers across the country, where participants learn the basic rules of International Humanitarian Law, also known as the law of armed conflict.

The Capacity Strengthening for Emergency Response in Africa (SERA) program is part of a partnership between the Canadian Red Cross and the Government of Canada. A large part of the SERA program involves training local Red Cross Societies in partner countries to help them be better prepared to handle disasters.